Toshiba launches upscaling Regza ZV TV

Toshiba haven’t taken losing the format war lying down.
It sometimes looks like the company is fighting a guerilla war against
the mighty Sony. We say that because it has brought out a new range of
televisions that claim to upscale normal standard definition television
pictures and DVD movies to near-HD quality.

The new Regza ZV
series of goggle boxes were unveiled sometime ago at the IFA show in
August. The new tellies use a Quad Core HD processor (or Spursengine)
to make a HD silk purse out of the sow’s ear that is Freeview (well
actually BBC One is always good quality – it’s the other channels that
try to play bandwidth sardines). This Spurs Engine is based on technology found in the
Cell processor of a PS3.

That said it is capable of displaying
normal HD pictures from a suitable source with its 1920 x1080
resolution. The TVs come in either 42-inch and 46-inch models in gloss
back and a stand. Input-wise, it sports three HDMI slots, Component
Video, S-Video and a D-Sub connection for PCs.

For gamers
there is something called Game Mode technology. This is a direct
channel for two-way communication between the TV and games consoles
which should cut down time lags, improves response times and ensures
smoother gaming.

The new Regza ZV televisions also have
Toshiba’s Active Vision M100 HD 100Hz picture processing technology,
which offers a 5:5 pulldown sequencing and doubles the overall image
refresh rate by inserting an intermediate image between frames.
Elsewhere are 10-Bit colour processing, dynamic contrast ratios of up
to 30,000:1, audio provided by NICAM Stereo and SRS WOW technology, and
an integrated digital tuner.

The 42-inch and 46-inch models are priced at £899.99 and £1199.99 respectively.